The conference that conferred the title of basketball mecca upon the Northeast welcomed Central Florida, University of Houston and Southern Methodist University as Big East participants in all sports. Boise State and San Diego State joined the conference for football.

Only from the perspective of the Pacific Ocean can the Big East be considered east anymore. A conference built in 1979 by seven northeastern schools now stretches across four time zones. A conference designed to become a basketball powerhouse—and which sent 11 of its 16 members to the NCAA Tournament last year—has added some decidedly mediocre basketball programs in pursuit of football riches.

If you like your road trips short, your college football secondary, and your rivalries traditional, your Big East is dead. The conference's goal, as stated in the first paragraph of the press release announcing the additions, is “staging an annual conference football championship game.”

At one point, the Big East was actually down to five football programs, when West Virginia followed Syracuse and Pittsburgh out the door this fall. But with the new additions to the conference, the Big East remains safely above the BCS threshold unless a majority of their remaining football programs—Rutgers, Louisville, Connecticut, Cincinnati and South Florida—decide to bolt.

In short order, the Big East wants to add another two schools, for a total of 12. Navy and Temple appear at this point to be the likeliest additions.

But where does all this leave the conference, hoops-wise?

Central Florida, Houston and S.M.U. join DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Notre Dame, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Villanova, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, Rutgers and South Florida in an 16-team basketball conference. There are some decent rivalries in there, and not just among the five original members (Georgetown, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Connecticut) and Villanova, which joined the conference in its second year.

Louisville has been to eight Final Fours and won two championships, both coming before their move to the Big East. Marquette has three Final Fours and an NCAA title, all won prior to joining the Big East as well. Houston participated in five Final Fours, and produced Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. Much of what makes the Big East the great power it set out to be in 1979 has little to do with the colleges that founded it.

And what of those great original powers, the Georgetown Hoyas of John Thompson Sr., the St. John's of Lou Carnesecca and Chris Mullin, Rollie Massimino's miraculous Villanova and Jim Calhoun's defending-champion Connecticut? In the cases of Georgetown, St. John's, Villanova, Marquette, Providence, DePaul, and Seton Hall, they couldn't even dream of entry into a high-powered basketball league these days. The lack of a Division I football program would stop them at the door.

But remember that every time Georgetown comes to Madison Square Garden to face St. John's, or every time Jay Wright and Villanova square off against Seton Hall, they're only able to do so because somewhere, thousands of miles away, Boise State is going to be playing football against San Diego State.